Revealing population flow patterns in the Sichuan-Chongqing region, China, during the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020

ABSTRACT COVID-19 has had a serious impact on the lives and health of people and severely affected the population flow in 2020. Baidu migration data offer great opportunities to study spatiotemporal interactions among cities. Revealing population flow patterns has important scientific significance for the precise prevention and control of the COVID-19 epidemic. The aim of this article is to reveal the spatiotemporal patterns of population flow and associated influential factors in 22 cities in the Sichuan-Chongqing region (SCR), which is regarded as the fourth pole of China’s economy. Four typical time periods are selected to study the spatiotemporal patterns of population flow. The regional population flow intensities in all cities and between different cities in the SCR are illustrated. Stepwise regression is used to analyse the factors affecting regional population flow intensity in four selected periods. The results show that (1) the COVID-19 epidemic greatly affected population flow in the SCR, (2) more travel occurred between cities on holidays than on weekdays in the SCR when the epidemic was not serious, and (3) the regional population flow intensity was strongly correlated with the population education level and transportation facilities when the epidemic was not serious.